Last night at Citi Field Sandy Alderson, Paul DePodesta, JP Riccardi and John Ricco sat down for a Q & A session with Mets season tickets holders. Of the season ticket holders in attendance were the first couple of Mets Blogdom Ed Leyro and Taryn Cooper. On Ed’s Studious Metsimus site he gives a recap of the some of the questions posed to the group and the answers given by the Baseball Ops members assembled. Some of these stood out to me, such as being asked why it’s taking so long for Alderson to make the Mets a contender. And Alderson replied “”We don’t want to be there one year and gone the next.” There is segment of Metsfandom whose craniums are as thick as a milk shake at the Shake Shack. When you inherit a holy mess both personnel and cash flow wise, it’s going to take some time to straighten things out. Alderson and his crew have the Mets on the right path and the impatient Mets fan (who I believe like Chipper Jones said puts a Highlander cap on when the Bronx Bastards play in October) is either too dense or quite frankly too ignorant to see this. In case you missed it, MLB on its 2013 Prospect Watch ranked three Mets in the top 30 of its top 100 list, Travis d’Aranud at #6, Zack Wheeler #8 and Noah Syndergaard #29 . Wheeler and d’Aranud will be up by no later than mid-season, Syndergaard in two seasons at least add them to Matt Harvey and you have a nice foundation for the future. Oh yeah I know what you’re saying but the outfield sucks!!!!

Alderson has let it be known in interview after interview that yes, the outfield is a problem spot and yes, I could have spent money to find a bonafide ML outfielder but he wasn’t happy with the sticker price, something he also admitted he has to get over:

“We understand what the market dictates and we have to be prepared to exist in that market,” said Alderson, who indicated there is an urgency to winning, and that he has not set out on a 10-year plan

Seems Alderson felt there were a couple or three players out there he could have signed but was unwilling to match the price set by the market. I wonder if he could have a do over, if he’d been a little more aggressive in bidding for Ryan Ludwick, Cody Ross or even Reed Johnson as any of those three would be the Mets top outfielder and none of them broke the bank in their newly signed deals. Ross was a player I wanted badly on the Mets as he hits with some pop from the right side of the plate and would have been a big upgrade in right field. To be fair here as well, there was not much else to choose from in the outfield free agent pool since there was no way in hell Josh Hamilton or Nick Swisher were going to be Mets, nor should they have been and my other wish list outfielder Shane Victorino got a year a couple of million dollars more than I thought he would from Boston and even though he’s born and bred Phuck Phace I’d have taken a run at him. Would you be happy with a Duda, Victorino, Ross/Baxter outfield? I would.

The best part of all this is in 11 days Mets pitchers and catchers will report to Port St Lonesome and 5 days after that the full squad will be there and then we can see for ourselves what we have in store in 2013 with our own eyes (and the eyes of those covering the camp) and be done with all this off season speculation.

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